Through much discussion about the new level 55 gear, I got to thinking, what really is the best setup for the new lvl 55 gear?

I have heard the Mega Mage is the best
I have heard that mix-matching the green/orange/purples was the best
I even thought that Shadow was comparable to Mega Mage (You can see my other thread HERE and choose for yourself, but I'm straying away from this notion).

There are MANY variables that go into the optimal gear setup for an individual. A player's skill level is most important IMO, followed by the style that person plays the game (Do you head the front lines? or do you hang in back and res?), also it depends if you are with a team, or soloing.

With that said, here is what I came up with. (some things may surprise you )

First off, i used Mystic's list of lvl 55 gear for my comparisons (I hope you don't mind, it was a GREAT help!), organized them into excel and went from there.

Here is my list in excel format that I went off of:


Notes:
I used the average damage when dealing with a span (i.e. Damage = 150 - 200, I used 175)
I converted all Damage values to 1.0 Speed to keep things easy to compare. (I just took the average damage and divided by the speed, i.e. if damage was 200, with speed of 1.1, then I calculated the damage to be 181.81 with Speed of 1)
I noted all of the Procs the pieces have. I do not know exactly what each of these procs do (If anyone knows exact numbers please let me know), but I wanted to note them due to the fact that they add benefit. (make sure you scroll to the right to see the listed procs).
All of the builds are just pertaining to the gear itself, NO player attributes have been included.
I didn't include the Enchanted set, simply because it makes no sense to choose that over the Mega Mage set.

First Build: Based off of Max Base Armor - More aimed at going "solo"

1st = Max Base Armor Build - Mega Mage (Expensive)
2nd = Mix of items (Very similar Armor, however loss of M/S) (Much Cheaper)


Next I assessed the highest damage producing builds.

First I started with highest amount of BASE damage (CRIT and HIT% are not taken into consideration)

These are the top 2 highest base Damage dealing builds. It is interesting that the full Mega Mage Staff set (with the set bonus added in) is still less than the orange set.
*(Keep in mind I converted damage amounts to Damage per Second)*

Next, I took into consideration the effects of CRIT and got some pretty crazy results. Below are the top damage producing builds, with the highest damage producing builds at the top.


Highest damage build is a mix of Green and Oranges.












Even the wand does more damage than the MM set





As you can see, The Mega Mage, in terms of highest damage, is actually pretty low on the ranks. But keep in mind this has the added benefit of very high M/S which is important. The procs on the sets also add further benefits.

Now, I created these sets to find the MAX armor build and the MAX damage builds. These sets may not be perfect for every occasion, or your playing style, they are just means to be informative. There are many benefits to certain sets such as MM's high amounts of M/S, and the Procs of the Lowman's Staffs.

I am working on finding a good "All Around" set best designed for and INT mage, both doing solo runs, and team runs. I will update in the near future.

Hope this helps someone pick out a good gear setup!